as infection and death ratesjump gci’oss as infection and death ratesjump across the world, the head of the world health organisation says he fears some countries aren't taking the coronavirus threat seriously enough. it comes as us authorities search for 2000 people who disembarked a cruise liner in san francisco last month — after the death of a passenger from the virus. a ceasefire agreed between the the russian and turkish presidents has begun in syria's idlib province. 0ther agreed measures includejoint patrols and a safety corridor along one of idlib's key roads. and these pictures are doing well online. the duke and duchess of sussex have attended an awards ceremony in london to celebrate the sporting achievements of service personnel. its one of their last official engagements before they step back as senior royals. that's all. stay with bbc world news. now on bbc news: shaun ley speaks to nspcc ambassador david tait on hardtalk.

hello and welcome to hardtalk. i am shaun ley. from the outside, my guest today appeared to have a near perfect life. all the trappings of a successful and highly lucrative career in the city of london. a wife and a young family at home. but on the inside, he was in turmoil. david tait suffered sexual abuse as a child that had catastrophic consequences into his adult life. after a breakdown that nearly cost him everything, including his life, he has dedicated himself to increasing the awareness of abuse against children and he's climbed everest five times to raise millions of pounds for charity. he says there are many children who know only too well that monsters truly do exist. now a raw and unflinching movie has been made about his life. has david tait found a way to deal with the pain of the past?

david tait, thank you for coming in and talking to us on hardtalk. "because i was one of those children" — those are the words that you wrote to colleagues at the end of a charity fundraising e—mail, and there are certainly a lot of grown—ups who were abused of children. globally, i think the estimate is about one in five women, one in 13 men. why did you want to tell your story? it was largely, i have to say, accidental. i was looking around for a new vehicle to raise money for a charity. ijumped out of planes, i tried to race cars. i largely crashed them. in 2003, i was sitting at my desk and i looked up on the screen above me at the chinese summit everest on the 50th anniversary.

it looked so majestic and beautiful that i thought i would do that. so i showed up in 2005, climbed it, luckily, and by surprise raised over £250,000. more or less ten times then i expected. so i went back in 2007, completely and utterly inspired that i had found this amazing vehicle, and because i had raised so much money, i felt that this was a turning point for me. my self—esteem bucket inside me, as i called it, somebody had put their finger in my self—esteem bucket and i suddenly felt wonderful. so i carried that through into 2007, i deemed to do the world's first double traverse up, down and turn around and have a cup of tea and come back over, and just before it, on impulse i wrote now one of my infamous begging e—mails, i wrote those prophetic words. and i wrote them once and i erased it and wrote them twice, and long story short, eventually i hit the send button

and ran from the office, but the world did not change. i thought it was going to. so it was this following wind of awesomeness i felt, and the amount of money i was raising that made mejust press the trigger on it. you're still relatively unusual though disclosing in this way. how difficult has the decision been to speak out? the charity, soon after the 2007 climb, when i got back i had a few months off because i was pretty broken bodily, and on impulse, following on from those prophetic words, i decided to try and write down what happened and i wrote 6—7 chapters. soon after, this book — failed book, i have to add, very failed book — it took shape. the charity by chance asked me if i would talk about my experiences. so i ended up standing for the very first speech of my entire life at the british museum alongside an unsuspecting michael paidlin. and suddenly, my legs shaking

violently, i almost ran. i was that close. i came out with the speech i never have changed since. so it was really a decision, a brutal decision, in those few moments, those months leading up to it that i realised that were not many people talking about their experiences. and i made a decision to do it. just simply to make a difference. people will understand why when they hear about the story. it is 1973, david tait is ten years old, and he's done what many kids have done, which is getting a saturdayjob, for a little extra pocket money. can you still remember when the abuse began? yes. we had just arrived back from south africa where i lived as a child. we lived in deptford, southeast london. behind this house was a tea room in the middle of the park. which was run by a family member, a distant family member none the less. i got a job there sweeping up and washing up etc.

and i was stacking the shelves. and then one day i dropped a bar of fry's chocolate cream on the ground, which i had fallen in love with, i popped it in the waste bin of my shorts. and then the owner — if you would like me to describe it i will — the owner of the shop came, saw me do it, and this is my speech, he told me to put it back, as i turned, ifelt a huge blow, ifell forward, i laid on the ground and my clothes were ripped from me and then at ten years old, i was raped. you didn't presumably know what on earth was going on. the relationship just flipped like that. to me, i wasjust being hurt. i had no idea it was. in fact, i had no idea what really had been done to me because i couldn't see it. i had no idea. presumably, you felt guilty because of the chocolate bar? in your mind, you were being

punished for something you had done wrong. to me, it was consistent with the caning my father used to give me. he had a banded cane, he used it liberally, and so the fear of my father being told by the shopkeeper about the chocolate bar was a very effective deterrent to keep me saying anything to anybody, even my mother. so i literally kept going back to the shop for fear of that repercussions of it. and then more people were included. what was it like those during that period, six months or so? i think it was three to four months we lived over the summer. as saturday got nearer and nearer each week. yes, it was a short period, my parents were looking for a home in which we eventually found

in distant croydon. and then we moved away. and i only ever saw that man one more time as far as i can remember, which was christmas that very year. he revisited my grandparents and my christmas was ruined that year as well. the film sulhpur and white, you say the film shows abuse at its granular level. i wonder what you meant by that phrase. it's been a frustration of mine that any films i've seen about sexual abuse have generally focused on the physical aspects. totally understandable. i get that. but it has become repetitive to me. yet i've noticed over the course of my life, largely through my own shortcomings and the impact i've had on others, is that there is a far bigger story there. and that is what i call the collateral damage. some people call it the viral effect. i do want to distinguish

between the viral effect emotionally on people, i'm not inferring for one second that i understand abuse becomes abuser in a physical sense. i cannot fathom that. but there are many people throughout my life that i've impacted that now i reach a stage, and i'm able to reconstruct it in my mind, that need compensation and one of the ways in doing this is to one, turn the story on the perpetrators, it is that something in my mind. i'm going right back and proving that something can good can come from that. that is for me. but also i'm really hoping to show all of the many other families out there suffering under the yoke of somebody like me in their midst that there is an explanation, you shouldn't accept itjust because it happened, and you should try and move beyond that. it doesn't help an abused person to be pandered to, frankly what i'm trying to say. and it didn't help me.

there is another aspect of this because as you say, it was horrible you had to see your abuser again that christmas, but he was soon part of your past, still there obviously but not somebody you had to confront every day. if that is not shocking enough, you suspected that your father was involved in what happened. suspected is the right word, yes. i balance the probability was yes, but i don't know. i saw him one day in the park unexpectedly wearing a suit walking towards the shop, from a distance, and then it happened, and i was confused sometimes by what i had to wear in the shop and then we moved to a new home and then by chance, it continued. but it continued in a different form, in a lighterform. but this was a man who you should have been able to trust.

whatever you can say about the awfulness of what those other men did to you, it may have been less in terms of the physical, but i can't imagine it is less in terms of the emotion. it was... i still remember my mother stumbling across it. i remember the bedroom door opening and her standing there. when you and your father were in there? yes. i still remember the silhouette. and then it ended. do you think she confronted your father about what she had seen? i don't remember it but i'm sure she must‘ve done. she moved downstairs. i was never alone with him for a period of time. i remember. it was also one of those things that we rarely ever discussed. i remember asking my mother why don't you leave and she said, "well, i will wait till you are 16," or something... it would always be another thing. my father was the sort of person who would leave £50 on the working top every friday and that is what she

had to live with. no savings. that was her housekeeping money. that was it. she made her own clothes. it was always a hand to mouth existence. and so, looking back at it, i understand why she wasn't able to just up sticks. this was a different time. were it to happen today, it is hard to imagine just not walking. and there are obviously now places to go, which didn't exist back in london in the mid—70s. eventually she did leave. but she left without you. yes. it was later in my teens, but i hadn't really connected that. it was the writer of the film, funnily enough, who sat in front of me and was aghast at no matter what age really, that she left. and i remember looking at susie farrell, the writer, and going, "i haven't really reconciled it that way but yes she did."

and i was left alone in that rather dismal house for quite a long period. years later, your mum approached you, something we see in the film, out of the blue, turned up at the office of a bank you're working at, and it was you then who subsequently approached your dad. why? there was a small domestic incident that triggered a real reaction from me. as susie the writer says, that is understandable, i cut my mother out of my life for four to five years. and i cut my father out of my life for ten to 12, ii to 12 years. when i reconciled with my mother, it was because she was terribly ill. and i had made her ill. part of the collateral damage which i regret more than anything. it reached the point where i had become relatively successful and confident that i wanted to... i felt the need to show off. 50% of it was to show that i have

done something with my life. like any son or daughter wants to show their parent. but it was more aggressive form of, "i really want to show you now." also another part of it, deep down inside of me, that really did always and still to this day regret that i don't have, never had the person that i'd watch others have, to go for a beer with and have a chat with and lean on. and to rely on and ask advice. at all. and so i reached out that one day on impulse and i made a phone call. i remember him answering the phone saying, "tait." i said, "it's me." "0h." i still remember it. "can we go for a drink?" let's pause for a second and see how that is reflected in the film — the two of you meeting at a restaurant. i heard you got kids you don't see. i provide. absent father sort of thing?

yeah. dad doesn't get to see his kids. it is a failure on my part, really. but then again, leaving them alone, best thing for them, really. wouldn't you say, dad? was there any sort of apology, any acknowledgement that what he'd done to you had been wrong? we never... it was one of those delicate moments, if i had brought it up... i instigated the meeting, so it was an unsteady thing. i think mark and i discussed this scene for... mark playing your dad.

..for maybe two hours before that scene. so he understood the dynamic behind that and the emotion involved. my personal opinion, that is the best part of the movie for mark and i think he agrees with that. but no, i tried to soldier on. i left the restaurant with a mixture of emotions i remember. i tried it a few more times. i tried to act normal. i also had the thought that i had children by then, and wouldn't it be nice, and i remember he came to the house once to help me build a jungle gym for my son. and he stood there in the garden, and from a distant i watched him with my son in a wheelbarrow, and it was the most peculiar sensation i can ever describe. watching and fearing that my son was in a wheelbarrow with my father

and yet i have been trying to encourage the situation, the turmoil inside of my mind, but i watched and i was... i was scared of doing it as well. it was a terrible mix of emotions at that time. and then we slowly faded and drifted apart. and we started to see each other less and less. and finally, he died. your life, your adult life, much of it has been in turmoil. 0utwardly, you are and have been over many years a highly successful, very effective businessman. you have achieved a great deal in your career. you have made some impressive decisions. you have carried people by your confidence. inside, you have been completely different and the success you have enjoyed in your professional life, i hope you would accept it is fair to say, and you tell me if i am wrong, has not been reflected in at least in the first part of your personal life. your first attempts to build

a family, to be a father and husband at least. there are two sides to my life. i am often bewildered that people say you look so confident. i'm sitting there going, "really? you're looking at the wrong person." but i developed a mechanism, a dubious quality, very early on in my career, where i didn't care. i had the ability to turn off emotions. it was a fantastic asset in certain circumstances. for instance, early days in investment banking. give me a goal. i will do it. let me take risk. no problem. there goes the switch off, no fear. it is not fearlessness. it is a non—caringness. which is useless for a family environment. and so when i found myself under pressure, i would literally turn the switch off in my head and give the impression that i was calm and collected and really i was not. and for the people around you,

the people who you cared about i'm sure, your wife and your children, you started a family, why did this switch appear? judging from the story, the switch often stayed off even for them? yes. a lot of the time, and i regret that. i use to, in my early career, when i was at goldman sachs, i lived a hedonistic lifestyle when i travelled. i would come back to a lovely woman and home who just wanted the ordinary things in life. and so i had an escape. i had a completely fictitious life going on that i relied upon to take myself away from reality. and so we diverge violently at that point and i regret the hurt that i have caused them over the course of the years. and to her credit, to everybody‘s credit really, they've all tried to understand and put up with this

rather schizophrenic personality i think that is generated from an incident like this in my childhood. and according to an independent inquiry for child sexual abuse in the uk which is ongoing at the moment, 33% of survivors experience depression, 32% lack trust of authority, 28% have thoughts of killing themselves, anxiety, 28%, self harm, 22%, and 22% do try to kill themselves. would you say that kind of gamut of experiences has been what you've had? all of those in one form of another? yes. the depression, the violent swings in mood without any doubt. i think it is probably the thing that put the pressure on my family relations more than anything. the contempt i hold them in one second, and the love i hold in the next. and they cannot understand that. i can't understand it. yet i couldn't help feeling it. it culminates in moments where you just have had enough.

you cannot stand it yourself. in a weird sort of way, although there was quite a lot of sex in your life, because of the lifestyle you were leading, there wasn't much love. no, this is an interesting point. what i really would like to make is that the fact that the quest for hearts as i called it is a real self—esteem issue. it is very important i found, and i think others in my situation will admit that, you just really want to be somebody‘s number one. and i know it sounds somewhat childish, but you do and you hunt down relationships, and you find someone, you gain their trust, they fall in love with you, and then you're looking over the shoulder for the next one. you still cannot quite believe that they find you, not attractive, that they truly love you, because inside of you you are thinking you're lamentable and a bottom feeder and you are disgusting. as an example, i sat opposite vanessa, the one woman who is utterly bulletproof.

this is your second wife? yes. the woman you now live with and have children with and a very happy family. very. and she said to me the other day, "after all of these years, you still don't trust me, do you?" and i said... i looked at her and i'm always honest, and i said, "i trust you more than anybody on earth." but... i didn't say the "but". shejust looked at me like "ok, i get it. it is difficult." you mentioned vanessa, and how you have described her and how the film portrays her, she is a remarkable woman. she is. how hard has this for her do you think and what difference has she made to your life? i think if vanessa could hit the erase button, right now, she would. to hell with everything. i don't think she much enjoys this one bit. i don't think, understandably, that she wants her laundry washed in public. and the humiliation that she perceives she feels demonstrated to the entire world.

but such is the measure of this person that she has backed me through it. the catchphrase of the entire film, which is "love is in an act of endless forgiveness" was accidentally written for her by susie farrell and i don't think there could be a better phrase for this woman. a remarkable personality. you have spoken up, you can speak up, people can listen but they have to do a bit more than that. they have to hear for the difference to be made. you have said it is frustrating the difference hasn't been made. what do we still have to do and what should we be doing? the key to this is — i differ from the charity on this. the nsppc. they will say that it is possible to cure sexual abuse. as in wipe it out. i'm unconvinced about that. what i am convinced about is the fact that we can destigmatize social abuse. to the extent that if a child, ten, ii—i2, whatever age is affected by this, is damaged by this, it doesn't seem

like the end of the world. we can reach a point where they truly believe it is like falling off of that bike, or being punched in the school playground. right now, it is such a heinous mind—altering thing that happens, that literally, as ijust said, your mind alters. very quickly. if you believe it is of the world, you'll carry it through your life. if we can destigmatize it to an extent that that a child will shrug, and wanting to see an official and talking openly, how much better would that be? david tait, thank you very much for talking to us.

hello there. there were winners and losers with the weather on thursday. parts of northern england had close to nine hours of sunshine. look at this beautiful weather watcher picture sent in through the lake district. but there was a different story south and east, i'm afraid. in fact, the only brightness possibly down to east sussex where the beach huts, because there was were over an inch—and—a—half of rain. that rain pretty persistent, now moving off into the near continent. not many isobars on the chart, so light winds and clear skies, allowing those temperatures to fall away. so it will be a chilly start around friday morning, and certainly worth bearing in mind as temperatures falljust below freezing in a few spots. the exception perhaps the southeast clinging to cloud and out into northern ireland. also some mist and fog around first thing as well. a few showers from the word go out to the west, and some of these showers will merge together for longer spells of rain as we go through the day. but for many, it is a case of once that mist and fog has lifted away,

dry with sunny spells coming through and certainly a quieter story for many. temperatures ranging from 7—11 celsius. now as we move out from friday into the weekend, we start to see another area of low pressure starting to move in from the atlantic. but i really want to emphasise as we move through the weekend that it will not be a write—off by any means. yes, it will turn increasingly windy, and there will be rain at times. but for many, rain actually arrives there saturday night into sunday morning. so you can see for the bulk of the country on saturday, clouding over from the west, but it will stay largely dry. we will have some rain, heavy and persistent into northwest england, western scotland and northern ireland by the end of the afternoon, and the winds will strengthen as well. temperatures ranging again from 7—11 celsius. now because the winds are strengthening, gusts in excess of 50—60 mph with that rain, it will push that rain through it

at quite a pace overnight saturday into sunday. so for many of us, we will actually see a good deal of dry weather around for the second half of the weekend. early morning rain clearing the southeast, a blustery day on sunday with plenty of frequent showers pushing in from the west. but as with the nature of showers, some of you may escape them altogether and keep some dryer, sunnier moments. again, highs between 7—11 celsius. and it really looks as this scene is to continue for the early half of the new working week. it states blustery with plenty of sunny spells and scattered sharp showers. whatever you're doing this take care.

welcome to newsday on the bbc. i'm mariko 0i in singapore. the headlines: as infection and death rates jump across the world the world health organisation says it fears some countries aren't taking the coronavirus threat seriously enough. after the death of a passenger from the virus officals search for over two thousand people who disembarked a cruise liner in san francisco. i'm lewis vaughan jones in london. also in the programme. as a ceasefire comes into affect in syria's idlib province people count the cost after months of brutal conflict. this is from the bomb? yes. civilians.